


It Feels Like Falling. It Feels Like Rain.

by UchiHime



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Trans Male Character, Trans Tim Drake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 18:32:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7981807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UchiHime/pseuds/UchiHime
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tim tried so hard to be the perfect son because anything less than perfect would be used as proof that he’s not really their <em>son</em>. If he can’t do what the other boys do, if he can’t be the <em>best </em>at what the other boys do, his parents would take the chance to remind him that he’s a girl and shouldn’t be trying to keep up with the boys in the first place. If he’s perfect, they would accept, they would love him, and maybe they would start loving each other again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Feels Like Falling. It Feels Like Rain.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm very new to Batman. This is my first fic for the fandom and I'm still learning the characters. That being said, please please review. 
> 
> Title from the Sleeping at Last Song "Sorrow" which I happened to listen to when I started writing this and felt like and really kinda fit. Though that was when I was planning on the story being longer, covering more of the comics, introducing more characters, and ending with some TimKon.

When he was about seven years old, Tim had taken a pair of scissors and chopped off his hair and cut up half the clothes in his closet. His nanny had not been pleased, but had held her tongue while attempting to salvage what was left of his hair. His parents, when they'd had finally returned home from their business trip three days later, had not been so forgiving. His mother had been near inconsolable when she saw him, and his father had yelled the roof down and fired the nanny on the spot for letting Tim “run wild.” They asked him why he would do something like this, but would not listen Tim’s reason.

They took him to a child psychiatrist, but she also would not listen to what he had to say. She had already decided before their first session had even begun that Tim was simply acting out because his parents worked too much and he wanted attention. 

“ _Spend some time with your daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Drake, make her feel special. Young ladies crave constant attention, you’d be surprised at the lengths they’d go to for it_.”

Despite how wrong she was, it ended up working out for the better. Because his parents decided the best way to spend time with him was to take him to the circus. The circus where Tim saw Dick Grayson perform a quadruple somersault which would, years later, change his life. After the tragedy, Tim’s mom mails Dick the picture they’d taken. Tim in the picture looks like a little boy and his mother his happy to have an excuse to be rid of it.

He’s taken back to the psychiatrist, partially because he’d started to suffer from nightmares, mostly because his continued insistence that he was not a girl. But nothing the psychiatrist suggested helped, and eventually his parents just gave up. They stopped trying to make him look and act like a girl, but they also stopped spending time with him. 

More and more, Jack and Janet traveled away on business trips, sending Tim to boarding school or leaving him with nannies. When they were home, they fought. They blamed each other for Tim being the way he was, then they blamed each other for the economy changing, and for the rising crime rates, and for the rainy weather. They always found reasons to be angry at each other until they were on the brink of divorce, but the core of the problem was Tim. Tim who keeps his hair short and never wears another dress and loves his camera more than dolls and idolizes Batman and refuses to answer to the name given to him at birth. They don’t look at him, they never call him by his name, they fill the void that used to be them loving him with hating each other instead.

Tim tried so hard to be the perfect son because anything less than perfect would be used as proof that he’s not really their _son_. If he can’t do what the other boys do, if he can’t be the _best_ at what the other boys do, his parents would take the chance to remind him that he’s a girl and shouldn’t be trying to keep up with the boys in the first place. If he’s perfect, they would accept, they would love him, and maybe they would start loving each other again.

When Tim was about nine years old, he saw Robin do a quadruple somersault on the news and he realizes Dick Grayson is Robin, so Bruce Wayne must be Batman and it’s perfect. Robin was The Laughing Boy Wonder, the epitome of boyhood, Gotham City’s most perfect son. If Tim could be like Robin, Robin who was everything a boy is meant to be, if Tim could be like him there was no way anyone could doubt that he was a boy too.

So he watches them. Follows them on patrol and watches them high on rooftops through the lens of his camera. And it very quickly stops being about learning how to make the rest of the world believe he’s a boy, and starts being about seeing his heroes in action. He learns from them not some missing variable that would affirm his manhood, but how to move quick and silently, and how to travel across rooftops without being seen, and how to investigate and solve a crime. He learns little pieces of how to be Robin, even though he no longer wished to be _like_ Robin.

He never thought he’d get the chance to actually be Robin, but Dick Grayson became Nightwing, and Jason Todd was buried in the Wayne Family Cemetery, and Batman needed a Robin. Bruce Wayne needed a son.

He put on the costume and made Bruce accept him, but by the time he _earned_  the costume, he felt like he didn’t deserve it, especially when he realizes the “undershirt” was actually a chest binder. He’d never said anything. With Bruce, Dick, and Alfred, he’d been “Tim” from the beginning. He’d never told them that his body did not match his gender identity, he didn’t want them to be like his parents. He didn’t want them to think of him as anything other than who he was.

“How did you know?” Tim asked, staring at the new costume he wore. It was different from the one Dick and Jason had worn, but somehow more suited for him.

“You had to know I’d look into your background, Tim,” Bruce said. “Timothy Jackson Drake does not exist on paper anywhere, but Jack and Janet Drake did have a daughter. I was hoping you’d tell me yourself...”

“I was going to tell you, but I... I didn’t want you to think I couldn’t do this, that I can’t be Robin, Boy Wonder. I didn’t want you to think differently of me.”

“If I didn’t think you could be Robin, I never would have started training you. This doesn’t change anything. You’re still Tim Drake. You don’t stop being Tim just because I know. Though, you’re definitely more a Teen Wonder than Boy Wonder, either way you’re my partner.”

And for now, that’s almost enough.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is being cross-posted on [my tumblr](http://winterinwakanda.tumblr.com)


End file.
